How more than 1,000 GPs are signed up
The occasion, a year ago, was a lecture given to fellows of the royal College of GPs on how a low-carb diet could potentially reverse type 2 diabetes — and the speaker was GP Dr David Unwin. Listening in the audience was Professor Steve Cox who felt a sense of excitement as Dr Unwin, from Southport, Merseyside, explained the remarkable success of his low-carb programme with his patients. ‘ Suddenly, my own experience with a handful of patients fell into place,’ says Professor
Cox, a visiting professor of general practice at Chester University and a GP in St Helens in Lancashire. ‘I’d seen type 2 diabetes patients who had improved their health after going low carb. They’d researched it themselves, lost weight and come to see me to reduce their medication.
‘Dr Unwin was using his own sugar charts to demonstrate the effect that different foods can have on blood sugar once digested — they were so simple to understand. The science behind it was also sound. I could see how valuable these charts would be for my own patients.
‘I took several weeks to read up on the low-carb research — and I found it very convincing. So I began to recommend it to patients.’
Professor Cox is one of an estimated 2,000-3,000 GPs recommending low carb as an alternative way to tackle the growing obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic. About 1,100 GPs have now completed the royal College of GPs’ online low- carb course, designed by Dr Unwin.
The sugar charts in question — approved by NICe — have been applauded by GPs nationwide as an invaluable guide for helping patients understand how ‘hidden sugars’ in food can play a key role in raising blood sugar levels.
‘I’ve been a GP for 40 years and seen obesity take over from smoking as the main preventable cause of illness and premature death,’ says Dr Peter Bagshaw, a Somerset GP.
‘But I was frustrated as the standard NHS diet advice and diabetes medication didn’t seem to work. My patients never really lost weight and needed increasing doses of medication. So the success and simplicity of low carb has been a revelation.’
Offering low carb has also been uplifting experience for GPs such as Dr David Oliver and Dr Kim Andrews, of the Freshford practice in Finchingfield, essex.
‘Helping our patients adopt a lowcarb lifestyle in the last year has
helped us love the job again,’ says Dr Oliver. ‘It’s so joyful to have a patient coming back with a smile on their face and know your advice has had a positive impact on their health.’
Dr Jackie Craven, a GP in Keighley, West Yorkshire, agrees: ‘It’s so rewarding to see patients helping themselves,’ she says of her own low-carb programme.
Yet some doctors are reluctant to recommend low carb. ‘Old- style, highcarb, low- fat advice for overweight patients is entrenched in the nhS,’ says Dr Vipan Bhardwaj, a GP in Berkshire. he conducted a low-carb pilot scheme in 2016 involving 40 type 2 patients at his practice in Wokingham, which saw all patients reducing their medication and around two- thirds coming off it altogether.
nurses are also now joining the growing army of medical professionals providing low-carb advice. The Low Carb/Real Food nurse Forum, a Facebook group where nurses share success stories and tips, now has 775 members just a year after it was set up.
Three years ago, practice nurse Catherine Cassell started advising patients about low carb, after being told about it by a patient who had lost weight.
‘I was upset to think I hadn’t known about low carb as a treatment before — but filled with hope I can help patients change their lives now.’
She has organised a Primary Care Lifestyle Conference to share low- carb diet advice with nearly 200 other primary care workers in the UK.